17 ways to grow your list (that are actually ethical)

Don't build links. Build relationships.

― Rand Fishkin (CEO and co-founder of Moz)

It's easy to feel like list growth is something that just… happens slowly, to other people, with big marketing budgets.

It doesn't have to be!

Many organisations with large audiences of engaged email subscribers didn't get there through ad spend — they got there by being genuinely useful, specific, and a little creative.

Here are some ideas — some obvious, some not — to get your list growing with people who might actually care about what you have to say.

One thing to not do

Before we get into the good stuff, I wouldn’t be doing my job right if I didn’t explicitly call out this anti-tip first.

I know you know this already, but I still occasionally get asked questions like this:

What’s the best way to warm up a list I’ve just purchased?

🏃‍♀️💨

Do not buy your list. Please! Do. Not. Do. This.

What might seem like a shortcut is anything but: you will have a list of email addresses on your hands... Those (might) belong to people. And those people likely never wanted to be sold to, and never expected to be emailed by you.

You will almost certainly tank your sender reputation by emailing them, and the ethical and compliance grounds are hazy at best.

Oh, and it's often actually illegal if you're in most countries with modern data protection laws.

Just steer clear of buying lists.

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OK, now, let’s get onto the real tips… the ones you’re here for!

Start with what you already have

1. Ask your existing subscribers directly. Send a short personal email to your current subscribers asking them to forward it to one person who'd find it valuable. A warm referral is worth twenty cold signups.

2. Audit your confirmation emails. Every order confirmation, donation receipt, event booking, and membership renewal you send is a missed opportunity if it doesn't include a clear, low-pressure invite to join your newsletter.

3. Add a signup CTA to your email signature. Every email you and your team send is a touchpoint. Link to your signup page with a single compelling line — "Get our weekly ideas on [topic]."

Btw 🤫 I have only just started putting a signup CTA in my signature — so far, it’s been really positive. Sending a little “👋 hi!” to anyone who has joined in the last week after seeing the newsletter link in my email signature!

Make the value obvious

4. Name your newsletter. "Sign up for our newsletter" is forgettable. "Join 3,000 people reading The Roots Report — weekly ideas for regenerative food systems" is something people want. Give it an identity.

5. Publish your archive publicly. Let prospective subscribers read your recent issues before signing up. Seeing the real thing converts far better than a generic "we promise to be useful" landing page.

6. Create a lead magnet worth having. A practical guide, a template, a checklist — something genuinely useful your audience would pay for. Give it away in exchange for an email address. The key words here are genuinely useful(!) A PDF repurposing your About page won't cut it. Don’t create a lead magnet for the wrong reasons — you’ll just waste everyone’s time.

Go where your people already are

7. Speak at events (even small ones). A 20-minute talk to 40 engaged people in your niche will often produce more quality subscribers than months of social posting. End with a clear, simple signup CTA. A good tip here is to generate a QR code for your newsletter signup page so people can quickly sign up from your slides.

8. Collaborate with adjacent newsletters. Find organisations or individuals who share your values but don't overlap directly. Offer a swap — you mention them, they mention you. One honest recommendation from a trusted voice beats an ad any day!

9. Show up in communities. Whether that's a Slack group, a Discord, a LinkedIn community, or a local WhatsApp — be a genuinely useful participant first. Add a link to your newsletter in your bio or profile. Never spam — don’t be “that guy” asking for signups before you’ve even said hi.

10. Be quotable on social. Turn your best newsletter lines into standalone posts. Not previews, not teasers — actually valuable content that stands alone. This is quite “top of funnel” but the people who engage will likely want more — and as long as you follow the other steps here, it’ll be easy for them to become a subscriber.

Lean into your mission

11. Partner with aligned brands. If you're a sustainability organisation, find a certified B Corp, an ethical retailer, or a purpose-led brand whose audience overlaps with yours. Co-create something — a guide, an event, a campaign — and both promote the signup page. As long as you are crisp and clear at the point of signup, you can both benefit from more subscribers.

12. Run a small pledge or challenge. "7 days of [thing your audience cares about]" delivered by email is a remarkably effective signup hook. It sets clear expectations, delivers real value, and creates a habit of opening your emails. It also gives an answer to the “Why now?” question for anyone on the fence about signing up.

13. Create a free tool or resource hub. A calculator, a directory, a curated link library relevant to your niche — things people bookmark and share. You could gate it lightly (name + email) or keep it free and include a newsletter CTA prominently.

The obvious stuff (that many people still skip)

Btw 🤫 One thing I always feel nervous about when writing these newsletters is reflecting on how many of my recommendations I’m not following. Why is it always so much easier to give advice to other people than to yourself?! Anyway…

14. Put your signup form everywhere. Homepage hero. Blog sidebar. Footer. Pop-up (yes, tasteful pop-up forms can work — especially exit-intent ones). After every blog post. Don't make people hunt for it, and don’t expect people to sign up the first time they see a signup form. It might be that they need to see it five times before they commit.

15. Run a giveaway or prize draw. This works especially well if the prize is mission-aligned — an experience, a product from a partner, a consultation with you. Low cost, high reach if promoted well. Again, just make sure it’s genuinely valuable, not made-up and a decoy — people see through this.

16. Use your events. In-person or online, events are list-building gold. Collect emails at registration, and follow up afterwards with an explicit invite to join your newsletter. These are people that already showed up for you, so it feels criminal to not make it easy for them to keep up to date for the future.

17. Just ask more often. Seriously — most organisations err on the side of asking far too rarely. No one wants to come across too pushy, and given you’re reading this, I suspect you’re not on that end of the scale. At the end of a blog post, at the bottom of a press release, in the bio of a guest article, in an Instagram story. You have permission to ask. Use it!

The thing that ties all of this together

Every signup method above works better when people trust you — and people trust you when your emails are consistently worth reading.

List growth and list quality are not separate problems. Fix the content and be clear on your audience, and growth follows naturally.

Unlike what many marketing “experts” may tell you, the goal isn't a big list. It's a list full of people who open your emails because they're glad they signed up.

Until next week,

James